Think big and get to work on a tulip carpet fit for a country manor
It’s time to bow down to your inner tulip desires, says our garden expert Agnes Stevenson. Suppliers are discounting bulbs so have big dreams
The sweet peas that were sown back in October are growing nicely. As winter gets into its stride, these little shoots are the promise that summer will return.
I’ve sown them four to a pot, so that, when it’s time to plant them out, all I need to do is to set each clump at the bottom of a cane and watch them climb.
At the moment they are snug in the greenhouse, alongside the tulips in their pots. Keeping the latter undercover isn’t a trick to get earlier flowers, although it might move them ahead by a week or two, but more of an attempt to out-fox the squirrels that would otherwise dig up the bulbs.
If you haven’t already planted tulips, then there’s still time and with many suppliers now discounting their stock, you can afford to splurge, creating the sort of displays that are normally only seen around stately homes, where they fill entire beds with tulips and underplant them with wallflowers and forget-me-nots.
Alternatively you could create a tulip meadow, planting the bulbs in random fashion and allowing them to grow through grass. I’ve seen this work very well under apple trees and although the tulips fade out over subsequent years, you can top them up with bulbs that have already flowered in containers and would otherwise be heading for the compost heap.
Meanwhile in the garden, the first, tiny pink blooms have opened on the winter flowering cherry tree and the last of the perennials has finally given up, allowing me to dig up the Crocosmias and replant them further down the slope.
I’ve also been cutting back the long grass that grows
on the bank. We don’t mow this as it is full of wildflowers and instead I cut it at the end of the year so that the primroses and fritillaries that grow here aren’t swamped in spring.
Working in this area of the garden involves avoiding the stems of the summer-flowering clematis that grow through the magnolias. These will be pruned in spring to promote the fresh growth that will carry next year’s flowers.
I’m also trying to decide on what to grow in the extralarge pots that line the rear terrace, now that the evergreen agapanthus have been moved to their winter quarters, under the shelter of the balcony.
A row of lollipop holly trees would be festive and I’ve toyed too with the idea of bamboo and the dwarf pampas grass, Cortadera selloana, while at the moment I’m seriously considering tufted hair grass (Deschampsia cespitosa), an evergreen grass with tufted spikes that appear in late summer and which hold raindrops like beads of glass.